The Austrian School is a school of economic thought that is based on the analysis of the purposeful actions of individuals (see methodological individualism)…Video Rating: 5 / 5

Speaker: Professor Lawrence H. Goulder Recorded on 20 October 2014 in Old Theatre, Old Building. How can climate change policies be designed to be not only environmentally effective but also…Video Rating: 5 / 5

On social issues such as drugs, religious freedom, and personal freedom
he’s right, however a child could tell you this stuff, yet somehow he gets
a round of applause for it.

On economic issues, he’s a horrible totalitarian and what he espouses would
be the single most destructive attack on american democracy since the war
of 1812.

Libertarianism economic theory, is based on Classical economics, which was
theorised in a pre-industrial and pre-capitalist world, those who professed
it did so under the belief that free markets would lead to perfect equality
and that this system would be better than the feudal society that came
before it, one of those is right and I don’t think I need point out which
one. Adam Smith, James Madison, John Locke, Von Humboldt etc could not have
imagined the society of the 21st century in which state involvement in the
economy would be an absolute necessity not only to meditate the effects of
the vast power gathered by private tyrannies but also in order to prevent
the destruction of the environment and to prevent the death/suffering of
millions. Private power does not mean the same thing it did in the 1700s or
even the 1900s, it has increased to unfathomable levels and many private
empires now outweigh countries in terms of wealth and manpower; and as if
they weren’t content with this state affairs they now seek to wipe out the
only real threat to their existence, democratic governments. For this in
short is the aim of all libertarians, the end of public control over
society to be replaced by a system of survival of the fittest, private
tyrannies, and the commoditisation of everything. They proclaim in the
supreme act of double think and double speak, that this system will have no
force behind it, everything will be voluntary. Their definition of force is
as flawed as a ship without a bottom, who would say there is no force
present when the starving man begs for work, degrades himself for
substance, and is driven by hunger to do work alien to him just to survive.
Sure there may be no tax man or government with a gun to force you to work,
but who would need them! Who needs force when you got the threat of
destitution to keep people in line and to make obedient workers out of. Who
needs the tax man when the huge profits and power reaped from control of
everything would allow the rich and powerful to build personal roads like
one saw in the soviet Union, reserved for higher ups only, or ability to
hire their own mercenary armies. Just as in the 1984 the desperate desire
for work would create the high, with all the power, the middle, with less
but desperate to hold onto it, and the low with nothing, but distracted,
kept stupid and ignorant. Even Adam Smith as early as the 1700s recognised
that the slave is better of than the man at the mercy of the free markets,
for as property, his master is encouraged to look after him, as a loving
owner polishes a car, while the wage worker is like a disposable fork, good
only for shovelling food into the mouth until the fork breaks.

A corporate ruling government would be the end of humanity, either by
environmental destruction or by the simple fact that whatever people
accepted this dystopian world as tolerable would no longer be human, for
the object of all humans is free and creative work, this would stop for 90%
of the population.

The Austrian School is a school of economic thought that is based on the
analysis of the purposeful actions of individuals (see methodological
individualism). It originated in late-19th and early-20th century Vienna
with the work of Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser,
and others. Current-day economists working in this tradition are located in
many different countries, but their work is referred to as Austrian
economics.

Among the theoretical contributions of the early years of the Austrian
School are the subjective theory of value, marginalism in price theory, and
the formulation of the economic calculation problem, each of which has
become an accepted part of mainstream economics.

Many economists are critical of the current-day Austrian School and
consider its rejection of econometrics, and aggregate macroeconomic
analysis to be outside of mainstream economic theory, or “heterodox.”
Austrians are likewise critical of mainstream economics. Although the
Austrian School has been considered heterodox since the late 1930s, it
began to attract renewed academic and public interest starting in the 1970s.

According to economist Bryan Caplan, by the late twentieth century, a split
had developed among those who self-identify with the Austrian School. One
group, building on the work of Hayek, follows the broad framework of
mainstream neoclassical economics, including its use of mathematical models
and general equilibrium, and merely brings a critical perspective to
mainstream methodology influenced by the Austrian notions such as the
economic calculation problem and the independent role of logical reasoning
in developing economic theory.

A second group, following Mises and Rothbard, rejects the neoclassical
theories of consumer and welfare economics, dismisses empirical methods and
mathematical and statistical models as inapplicable to economic science,
and asserts that economic theory went entirely astray in the twentieth
century; they offer the Misesian view as a radical alternative paradigm to
mainstream theory. Caplan wrote that if “Mises and Rothbard are right, then
[mainstream] economics is wrong; but if Hayek is right, then mainstream
economics merely needs to adjust its focus.”[21]

Economist Leland Yeager discussed the late twentieth century rift and
referred to a discussion written by Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe,
Joseph Salerno, and others in which they attack and disparage Hayek. “To
try to drive a wedge between Mises and Hayek on [the role of knowledge in
economic calculation], especially to the disparagement of Hayek, is unfair
to these two great men, unfaithful to the history of economic thought” and
went on to call the rift subversive to economic analysis and the historical
understanding of the fall of Eastern European communism.[75]

In a 1999 book published by the Mises Institute,[76] Hans-Hermann Hoppe
asserted that Murray Rothbard was the leader of the “mainstream within
Austrian Economics” and contrasted Rothbard with Nobel Laureate Friedrich
Hayek, whom he identified as a British empiricist and an opponent of the
thought of Mises and Rothbard. Hoppe acknowledged that Hayek was the most
prominent Austrian economist within academia, but stated that Hayek was an
opponent of the Austrian tradition which led from Carl Menger and
Böhm-Bawerk through Mises to Rothbard.

Economists of the Hayekian view are affiliated with the Cato Institute,
George Mason University, and New York University, among other institutions.
They include Peter Boettke, Roger Garrison, Steven Horwitz, Peter Leeson
and George Reisman. Economists of the Mises-Rothbard view include Walter
Block, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jesús Huerta de Soto and Robert P. Murphy, each
of whom is associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute[77] and some of
them also with academic institutions.[77] According to Murphy, a “truce
between (for lack of better terms) the GMU Austro-libertarians and the
Auburn Austro-libertarians” was signed around 2011.

Many theories developed by “first wave” Austrian economists have been
absorbed into mainstream economics. These include Carl Menger’s theories on
marginal utility, Friedrich von Wieser’s theories on opportunity cost, and
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s theories on time preference, as well as Menger and
Böhm-Bawerk’s criticisms of Marxian economics.[citation needed]

Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that the founders
of the Austrian School “reached far into the future from when most of them
practiced and have had a profound and, in my judgment, probably an
irreversible effect on how most mainstream economists think in this
country.”[80] In 1987, Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan told an
interviewer, “I have no objections to being called an Austrian. Hayek and
Mises might consider me an Austrian but, surely some of the others would
not.”﻿